


To Die, To Sleep (to sleep, perchance to dream)

by sparxwrites



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Emotional Hurt, Lovecraftian, Memories, Mild Horror, Nightmares, Spooky, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28756788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: When Caleb opens his eyes, he is sat at the kitchen table of his childhood home.And there is Mollymauk, sat across the table from him, healthy and well and resplendent in his carnival coat. Exactly the same as the day he had died.(In which Caleb's dreams contain Mollymauk, and fire, and something else entirely...)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	To Die, To Sleep (to sleep, perchance to dream)

When Caleb opens his eyes, he is sat at the kitchen table of his childhood home. 

There is the familiar scratch of his initials in front of him, carved in to the solid, weathered wood with his first knife when he was nine. He’d been beaten for that, his father angry and his mother exasperated, but there his initials had stayed until they’d burned to ashes with everything else. There is a hot mug of weak tea in his hands, as scarred and calloused as they were when he closed his eyes mere moments ago. 

And there is Mollymauk, sat across the table from him, healthy and well and resplendent in his carnival coat. Exactly the same as the day he had died.

“No,” says Caleb, quietly. His voice is the kind of steady that comes with shock. He cannot move. “ _No_. You– you are dead. I saw you die, and this… I saw this place burn, too. What _is_ this?”

Molly shrugs. Light glints yellow and orange and red off the rubies in his rings, off the gold of his jewellery. “It’s your dream, my friend,” he says, and his voice hits Caleb right beneath the ribs. “You’d know better than I. I’m just here to play my part, that’s all – and then I’ll be off. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

 _Dream_. The word slides off Caleb’s mind like blood off a blade. “I am going mad,” he says. The hearth crackles softly behind him, making music of the wood that feeds it. “I must be. That… that must be it. I am going mad, again.”

“Ah, well,” says Molly, mildly. “That seems a little harsh on yourself there, Mister Caleb. But, it’s your dream, I suppose. You can be as mad as you want to be.”

Caleb wraps his hands tighter around the uneven earthenware mug, feels the heat of it seep down to his bones. It feels a little like the heat that fire-casting brings to bear on his palms, except safer – and then the walls catch his eye, the streaks of charcoal-soot creeping up their sides, and nothing feels safe any more. “I do not want to be mad at all.”

“And I don’t want to be dead.” Molly grins, a little manically, and swings his legs up to rest his boots on the table. They are caked in the thick, stagnant mud of Shady Creek Run, rimmed in a scarlet crust. “But we can’t always get what we want, now, can we?”

There is a spot of blood on his silk shirt. As Caleb watches, it unfurls, like a flower. Like an opening eye.

It starts to spread.

“I…” starts Caleb, and stops, sighing, grinding the heel of one palm into his eye socket. His head hurts. His head _hurts._ That seems unfair, somehow, for some reason he cannot quite grasp. “I did not want you to die, either. You _should not_ have died.” There’s flickers at the corners of his vision when he pulls his hands away, red and orange.

“Like your parents shouldn’t have died?” asks Molly, pleasantly. There’s orange in the red of his eyes, too. Yellow sparks, in the centre, like dying stars. He folds his hands over his stomach, and grins wider, and doesn’t seem to notice the blood. “Pity, isn’t it, really. People dying. Seems to keep happening around you.”

Flames begin to lick at the base of the walls. There is smoke on the air. Fire on the horizon, all around.

Caleb swallows, hard, and feels the motion like a knife through his throat. “I do not want to do this,” he whispers, and his voice is scarcely audible over the increasingly hungry snap-crackle of the flames. The whitewash is turning black, the walls eaten through with fire like termites, racing up the supporting beams. The house turns into a cage around him, riddled with fire, glowing with heat. “Please, I– not here. Please. Not here. Not now. Not _this_.”

There is a woman in bed above him, he knows, and a man, too. They are asleep. They are in each others arms. They love each other very much, and their son, too, whom they are so, so proud of.

Caleb knows this, in the same way he knows which way is north, in the same way he knows when the sun will rise and set. In the same way he knows exactly how their screams will sound, when the hungry fire eats them alive, down to bones and ash.

“I don’t want to do this, either, and yet… here we are.” Molly spreads his hands in a half-shrug. There are eyes tattooed in the centres of his palms, in ink the same red as blood, as fire. As Caleb watches, they blink. They are watching him back. “Your dream, remember? All I’m doing is following the script.” He sighs, heavily. His shirt is full red, now, a deep and glistening ruby. His skin is pale, thin and papery, his tattoos jewel-bright against their bloodless canvas. “Wish I didn’t have to. I really, really do.”

He looks sad, but Caleb doesn’t know if he can trust that. Doesn’t know if he can trust anything, here. The fire is halfway up the walls. The house creaks around him. It’s groaning at the seams, ready to give.

“I don’t,” says Caleb, and there is pain through his head, through his eye, like a knife. He blinks, and when the blink is over, the world has been consumed by flames. It is hard to hear over the roaring. It is hard to think through the heat. “I don’t understand. Why– why are you here? Why are, why are your _eyes_ –”

They blink at him, all nine of them, through the red of Molly’s shirt. He shouldn’t be able to see them, but he can. The peacock across Molly’s back trills, and fans its tail feathers, and Caleb feels the sharp, wicked pain of his skull being pried open. This cannot be happening. This cannot be real.

Dream. Mollymauk had said _dream_. The word has a meaning, but Caleb cannot reach for it through the flames. He cannot think, under the weight of all those _eyes_.

The house is on fire. The eyes are blinking. The house is burning. Molly’s silk shirt is soaked through with blood, so wet it’s dripping, and he’s still smiling. His skin is thin, _so thin_. There is something underneath it, thinks Caleb, in a moment of sudden and horrifying clarity. There is something under the skin, under the blood and the tattoos, and he _does not know what it is._

“…My cue to leave, I think,” Mollymauk says, quietly, with a smile like the wicked edge of a glass scimitar. “Goodbye, Mister Caleb. Until we meet again.”

He pauses, and for a second– his eyes are not his own. They are red, yellow-orange with flame, and they are vast and ancient and distant and _wrong_. The thing beneath his skin is pressed close – close enough the Caleb can see its shadow, looming closer still through the blood. 

“I hope,” says the shadow, in Mollymauk’s voice, with Mollymauk’s tongue and teeth and lips, “for your sake, that that’s a long, _long_ time.”

A beam falls from the ceiling, charred black and laced through with glowing coals, bisecting the table. The soot it throws up obscures the scene, obscures Molly and his scarlet shirt and his technicolour coat. The red glow of his eyes is all that remains, blood red and brilliant, piercing through the smoke – and there are nine of them, each as real as the last. None of them are his own. All of them are watching Caleb.

“ _Mollymauk_!” cries Caleb, and his voice is raw like he has been screaming. Perhaps he has been. There are screams ringing in his ears. Perhaps they are his. “Mollymauk, _wait_ –”

Mollymauk does not wait. 

Caleb wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing this two and a half years ago, and only just now worked out what i actually wanted to do with it. true story. mad props to matt for providing me the lovecraftian kick in the pants i needed to get it done.
> 
> come find me @ sparxwrites on tumblr, or @sparxwriting on twitter, for more content!


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